Sorry but sticking a surcharge onto something is a complication!
It isn’t a complication at all. It’s very simple, like charging 5p for a carrier bag. That hasn’t made shopping more complicated. It’s made it simpler and socially and environmentally beneficial, by modifying consumer behaviour.
Really? I've been catching trains for more than 40 years and I've never done so, and I haven't always lived in Mid Wales.
I suggest you exaggerate!
I really don’t. Come to Woking, for example, and observe the 20-30 deep queues and trains to London leaving. If I arrive at the station at 0800, and need to renew my season ticket (or buy another ticket), I’m generally missing two or three trains in the time it takes the system to sell me one. That’s the same for everyone in the queue.
You only have to look at the Disputes section to see how many people say “I was going to miss my train so instead of buying a ticket I just got on”. Missing trains because you’re stuck in a queue or the vending process is absolutely a daily occurrence. That’s why it makes sense for tickets to be retailed away from stations (wherever that may be!), and for the system to be changed to one where you don’t need a trained professional to sell you the right ticket between two small towns. That’s an indefensibly mad situation.
But we aren't designing a new system, we are having to use the one we have.
That’s not really true - there are lots of changes afoot which, slowly, are changing the system, like single leg pricing. That’s the kind of simplification that comes about once you start working with fulfilment solutions which come into their own when they’re dealing with a simpler fares structure.
By your own admission you are no longer involved in ticketing now, so perhaps you need to read Gareth's comments again, considering he currently runs a very successful and busy ticket office.
Sorry, I’m not here to claim moral or technical superiority - but I do know my stuff when it comes to passenger demand, what passengers say about ticketing, and why paperless ticketing is essential for the railway to keep pace.
I can’t comment on Gareth’s experience because I don’t actually know what it is, other than he works in a (non-urban?) ticket office. I don’t know what experience he has in implementing paperless tickets or gathering customer feedback, because he hasn’t said.
This notwithstanding, I still note that most of the opposition to paperless tickets comes not from those with no irons in the fire, but from those who have a dog in the fight, so to speak.